Pop-up Christmas bar Tinsel gets a scary Halloween makeover

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PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) - For the past few years, the popular pop-up bar Tinsel that took over the former home of Simpson's Jewelry on 12th Street, has brought elaborate Christmas decorations and unique holiday cocktails to Center City's Midtown Village neighborhood in December. This year, Tinsel is back earlier than normal, with a frightening new look.

"We're going from demonic to Santa Claus," explained Teddy Sourias, the brainchild behind Tinsel and now its new Halloween counterpart, called "Nightmare Before Tinsel."

For the month of October and a few days into November, Nightmare Before Tinsel is replacing the candy canes and elves with something a little more creepy.

"We have different scenes like all eyes on you," Sourias told KYW Newsradio, "the dead dolls and bodies are above us, skulls over here we have the Beetlejuice area over here, up front we have...it looks like a mansion with dead bodies hanging from it, there's a Michael Myers scene."

Skeletons, coffins, spiders, Edgar Allen Poe--all of your Halloween favorites are covered, although Sourias said the main goal is not necessarily to scare people.

"You know, it's not over the top," he said. "I think if you have arachnophobia, you walk in, you're like 'oh that's cool there are a lot of spiders up there,' but a lot of people are afraid of dolls, a lot of people are afraid of clowns, we have that stuff here, but it's not over the top."

Sourias did not want to reveal too much, he said Nightmare Before Tinsel is all about surprises. But, he did share some details on the Halloween-based cocktails they'll be making.

"Here we have a lot of skulls, we have a little skull shot and you actually keep the plastic shot glass, but it's a skull shot glass," he explained. "We have a candy corn cocktail, we'll have about four different drinking vessels that you get to keep."

Nightmare Before Tinsel is open now. And Sourias promises by the time Christmas season rolls around, "Tinsel" will be back for a third year.